Oakley North - London, England

"We would much appreciate your cooperation with us, any of you, but if you feel the need to do so, the door is that way. Once through you will be given your Atlantean Identity and let free into a world; a world where technically, you have no rights. Your choice."

Oakley nodded, slowly accepting what she had done by coming here. Though she had no intention of returning to her father, she realised now that she could not. If she did, though her father would accept her for whatever she was, the world she would return to would not. She could never go back to her academy in southern France, she could not return to her scheduled life, the one that had been planned out for her because of her 'condition'. She took a deep breath and sighed, feeling her armour slightly recede and pressure lifting off the cast. Nothing bad had happened yet. She would go to this camp (hopefully) and she would fall into another routine and then be at peace until something else came up. That is what she would do.

She saw the boy, no, man? The guy beside her, Michael, pulled his hands up to his face out of the corner of her eyes. Huh? What was wrong with him? Was this his power? Oakley wasn't sure what he was doing, maybe he was shooting lasers from his eyes. But no, he pulled his hands away and finally revealed them, his once darker looking eyes now a steely-gray from behind his glasses. They were kind of pretty.

"Hey, are you okay?" Oakley arched her head to try and catch his eye, expressing some general concern. She may of not known the guy and found him to be a little weird and nosy, but she wished him no harm. He had tears falling from his eyes as he closed them again. It was like... he had rubbed them too much and they were crying themselves from his pain. She made an empathetic face at him; she knew how it felt to have her Atlantean ability cause so much physical pain.

"Oakley..." he managed to say, "what the hell is on your arm?!? Is it your ability?"

"Wha-" Oakley's heart stopped. Her bandage was covered, how could he see? How could he know? She hadn't shown him, she hadn't shown anyone. Maybe he could read minds, that was it. He could read minds, that was it. He had read her saying it and he had heard all of the miserable things she was thinking.

There was a crack then the cast covering her arm practically exploded, revealing the armour behind it. She gave a yell, her arm was on fire and her fretting was not making it worse, not in the least. Now everyone knew that she was a freak and that she had been hiding such an unnatural thing. She gave another yell as she felt the armour move again, growing past her elbow. She stepped back from the group, sliding against the wall. Her arm had now expanded to maybe three or four times its size, her palm (now about three quarters of a foot wide) resting against the floor. She gripped her bicep with her other hand, hoping to slow down the process but it made no difference. It hurt like hell.

"P-please, don't come any c-closer!" Oakley turned away from her peers, hardly wanting to be the centre of attention.